Esperanza Spalding

Montreal was a very active jazz center until club owners started putting in strippers instead of music. Before long, there was nothing to hear.

If you think it, want it, dream it… then it’s real. You are what you feel.

We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first, rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity.

If I can’t feel it, I don’t want to sing it.

Miles Davis is one who writes songs when he plays.

If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it ‘Chuck Berry’.

They told me to play what I felt. Hey, I’m a Jazz musician, that’s what I do.

I’ve studied all my musical life, but learning is only good if you do something constructive with it.

I’m not much on gimmicks. I never have been because they don’t last.

I was unfashionable before anyone knew who I was.

My dream is to do whatever I want without any interference from the record company.

Too many young musicians today want to win polls before they learn their instruments.

I was walking down the street, and I saw a sewer digger on his lunch hour open his lunch pail, dig out a harmonica, knock out the cracker crumbs, and play a bunch of tunes on it. I was fascinated by that harmonica, so I stared the guy out of it. I just stared at him. He said, ‘Here, kid, take it. Get out of here.’

One way or the other, if you want to find reasons why you shouldn’t keep on, you’ll find ’em. The obstacles are all there; there are a million of ’em.

You can’t seperate modern jazz from rock or from rhythm and blues – you can’t seperate it. Because that’s where it all started, and that’s where it all come from – that’s where I learned to keep rhythm – in church.